


Sleepwalking

by BloodiedRose



Series: Broken Crown [1]
Category: Class (TV 2016)
Genre: Babies, Genocide, Implied mental illness, Intrusive Thoughts, M/M, Post-Season/Series 01, Psychological Trauma, References to sexual activity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-03
Updated: 2017-01-06
Packaged: 2018-09-14 09:08:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,924
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9172636
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BloodiedRose/pseuds/BloodiedRose
Summary: Their world has fallen apart, so Matteusz takes Charlie home.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> It seems I can only write fic for small fandoms, who knew. Also, this is not a happy fic. At all. Also the violence isn't necessary graphic but there are some not quite pleasant implications at points so I thought it was best to warn for it anyway.

Charlie had been stunned into silence when April woke up. They all had, really, when April’s voice came from what was decidedly not April’s mouth. After the turmoil of the day it seemed that was what had sent their collective brains into meltdown. Hushing out their thoughts with white noise that soon turned to more swear words than they thought they knew. 

The difference was that they had all woken up. The group had split up immediately, all attempting to process the trauma of the day in whichever way they could cope. After all, bonds could only take so much strain before they snapped. Miss Quill had walked off to do whatever Miss Quill did, forcing her lips into a victorious smirk to hide the emptiness in her eyes. And Charlie had not even moved. He still stared at the place where April’s body had been before April vanished with it, at the space behind it where she had woken up as someone else. 

Matteusz wondered what she was going to do with it. Perhaps she could keep it in the hopes that they could return her to it. But mysterious soul swapping aside, it was still a dead body. A resurrection probably didn’t stop a corpse from beginning to rot. Not that he was going to take it from her even if he did know where she was. Don’t take the last shred of hope from someone who is already broken.

It was that same reasoning that led him to rise to his feet. He doubted Charlie noticed Matteusz moving behind him to the front of the auditorium. Matteusz stood in front of the cabinet. It was wide open and empty, nothing more than an ornament now. He had felt the power it held earlier and wanted to tear it apart. Perhaps it would be best. Instead he swallowed the bile in his throat and picked it up. It felt cold, or at least made him feel cold, and he wanted nothing more than to drop it on the ground and run away. He walked forward.

“I need you to stand up,” Matteusz said quietly. He could not carry both Charlie and the cabinet. He certainly could not risk leaving one of them behind. And he- he needed something to know that Charlie was still alive. That his mind had not collapsed under the weight of his grief and his actions. That he was not going to choke on the words he had cried out only a few minutes (hours? It felt like years) before. At least, not completely. 

Charlie did stand eventually. It was more akin to a newborn colt than a teenage boy; his shoulders and head slumped under the weight of two worlds and a metaphorical crown while his legs shook in an attempt to bear the weight. The walk home was long and silent. Charlie walked only because his feet were ingrained with moving forward. Matteusz kept wanting to stop on the side of the road and be sick.

They arrived unceremoniously. Charlie’s feet simply stopped moving when they reached the steps. Matteusz sat the cabinet down and reached for his key. It had been left untouched for the past six days- he had not been sure that Charlie would welcome him back, not after what Matteusz had said when holding the rock, so he had rung the doorbell instead. Now Matteusz felt obligated to use it as often as possible. He hoped it would make it hurt less if he ended up never using it again.

Matteusz sat the cabinet down in a corner of the living room and covered it with a blanket. He did not want it near him, but he wanted it near Charlie even less, so this was the nearest compromise. Then he took Charlie’s hand and led him up the stairs. If he did not know better, he would say that Charlie was drugged. His eyes were glassy and he moved as if he were underwater. Walking up the stairs took more effort than walking the flat path home had so Matteusz walked slowly to allow Charlie time to keep up. 

The beginning of sunset shone through Charlie’s window, lighting up the stars on his walls with the soft reds and yellows. Matteusz loved the sunset on Earth- from Charlie’s description of his planet, he was sure that he would have loved them even more on Rhodia. Not that it mattered. Rhodia would have no more sunsets. This had almost been Earth’s last. A small part of Matteusz, a bitter and angry part, saw Charlie’s vacant eyes and almost wished that it had been. 

He reached up and took Charlie’s jacket from his shoulder. The grey jacket was placed on the back of a glass rail, followed by Charlie’s check shirt. Matteusz had planned to make a joke about Charlie and his fondness for the pattern but now all he could think about was golden streaks of light, a blue laser beam that ripped itself through April’s stomach. Charlie continuing his destruction even though the immediate threat was over. 

Matteusz supposed that was the difference between the two of them- Charlie was a King, one that truly had been born to lead rather than fall into it by circumstance. Charlie thought only of potential, how to minimise all risk to his people no matter the cost. The Shadow Kin had always returned, yes, but the way April spoke of them Matteusz doubted that any who could fight would have missed the chance to destroy another planet. Which meant that all of the soldiers were on the battlefield. He did not want to think about everyone else. 

Matteusz had once asked why Charlie was so insistent that Miss Quill was a terrorist and not a soldier. Why he hated every claim she made that they had been fighting a war.

“War is for soldiers,” Charlie had said. “For people who have trained and chosen to fight. If you harm someone who is not a soldier then that is not an act of war. That is murder.”

When Matteusz had admitted to being frightened of Charlie, he had been in part worried that Charlie could justify it. He had tried, using the grief of losing his planet as a reason for exacting retribution, but he had never stood by it. In his heart, Charlie agreed that killing the Shadow Kin would be wrong. He was not so alien that even genocide could be accepted. Matteusz had been at times uncomfortable with the differences between he and Charlie’s morality, but it seemed there was one point that they wholeheartedly, broken heartedly, agreed on. Charlie was a murderer. He had taken the war off the battlefield and death past the soldiers, so determined was he to eradicate all potential threats to his new home. 

Charlie could have stopped. He had begged Charlie to stop. But Charlie had continued anyway. Matteusz hated him for it. Yet there he was, unbuckling Charlie’s jeans and helping him step out of them, followed by his underwear. Charlie’s eyes were beginning to droop, but they showed no change in awareness. Perhaps Charlie mind had fallen asleep once he had been shattered out of his suicidal hysteria, and now he was sleepwalking. 

Matteusz turned away and pulled Charlie’s pyjamas out from where he had thrown them on the floor. It had been endearing- an alien prince who had watched his people be slaughtered still subscribed to the oath of all teenagers that the floor was perfectly valid closet space. Matteusz had expected Charlie to be obsessed with cleanliness to match how put together he always looked at school. Instead there were times that if it was not for Matteusz, you would not be able to see the floor. 

Charlie had perfected the ‘stiff upper lip’ of the ruling classes. Every time he was outside it had at least in part been a performance. The way he dressed, the way he spoke, even the way that he stood. Even functioning was a performance of sorts, keeping his despair so tightly bottled up that it was only in the shower you could hear the faintest hints of Charlie crying. It had been two weeks living with Charlie that Matteusz had seen him drop the performance- had seen the slouch drain from Charlie’s shoulders and all the pretence of ‘human’ fall away. It had startled him, watching the boy he loved so easily turn into a future (or present, or never to be) King. Matteusz had been so taken by his mere presence that his leg was already bent before he realised he was trying to fall to his knees.

But even for Matteusz there was a performance. He knew that no matter what, there would always be parts of Charlie, important, vital pieces, that he would never see. He could never truly see Charlie the Rhodian, or Charlie the Prince, heir apparent to a war torn world, because Charlie would never really be in a situation where he would need to be that piece again. It broke his heart that, even though Charlie claimed to have been physically unwounded by the Shadow Kin, he still had had parts of his soul amputated.

Charlie’s face was even for show. It had been a nervous whisper in the middle of the night when Charlie admitted that the face Matteusz saw was not his true one. Matteusz had figured as much (he had all but expected Miss Quill to have been given a new face; they both had such difficulty moving as if they were comfortable in human skin but it was more obvious in her), but it had felt like something to cherish when Charlie had confessed it. Charlie was still too shy to show himself, or even describe his features, but Matteusz had hoped that it would happen one day. That he could see Charlie as he was and bask in the beauty. 

He supposed that he was the person who had seen Charlie at his most vulnerable. There were only select times that Charlie allowed his performance to drop. One was, of course, during sex. It was a subtle undoing, with breathless whines and unkempt hair (it was soft, and Matteusz’s favourite place to rest his hands). But it was an undoing all the same. Especially when Charlie held so tightly onto his arms it felt like Charlie could crush his bones and clenched around him. Laughing into their kiss. He liked seeing that Charlie. The other ones hurt more; his shuddering sobs as he rocked back and forth after a nightmare or (much rarer, thankfully) flashback. He could not even touch Charlie then sometimes, Charlie mistaking every touch as a Shadow Kin hand. Once he had even had to try and coax Charlie out of a corner, murmuring comfort to him and singing Polish lullabies until Charlie returned to him from the screams of a massacre.

Matteusz loved Charlie for willing to bare his vulnerabilities, even though some of them had thorns. Now, standing there naked while Matteusz began to put pyjamas on him, with so much blood on his hands that he was drowning in it, Matteusz knew that those had been nothing in comparison. Charlie seemed like a baby, with a blank mind and an incapable body, ready to be taught the world anew. It seemed that it was through Hell that he had been reborn. But this infant was not Charlie.

Charlie was bright, with an incurable sadness and a rage that burned in him every day. A mind that Matteusz knew was wondrous even though their friends did not seem to agree. He had not asked Miss Quill what the people of Rhodia had thought of Charlie because he knew. Had seen it when Charlie fought the prisoner, walked towards Shadow Kin soldiers with a lone gun and no one else to fire with him. Charlie was a King that earned love effortlessly, who all but commanded it and would have people willingly follow him into Hell. And Matteusz would have been leader of the march, even if the King was adorned with a broken crown. 

Once Charlie was dressed for bed, Matteusz led him to the bed and lay him down. He pulled the covers up as Charlie closed his eyes. There was one last glance at the sunset, then at the frightened people scattering around below, before he closed the blinds and plunged the room into darkness. He returned to Charlie’s bedside and, after only a moment of hesitation, bent down to place a kiss on Charlie’s forehead. He couldn’t tell if the tracks on Charlie’s cheeks were from Charlie’s tears or his own. Matteusz tried to say it, to at least whisper those precious words, but they were stuck in his throat. Instead, he took a pillow from his side of the bed and left the room, closing the door softly behind him. 

It was only the beginning of evening so under normal circumstances he would have been horrified at the thought of going to sleep so early. However, the events of the day had drained him to the point where he felt like he would never have energy again. He sat the pillow at the top of the couch before grabbing another rug and laying it on top of himself. Part of him wanted to leave, to walk out the door and never look back. Another wanted to go back upstairs, to gather Charlie in his arms and tell him that he would never leave. A small part, that horrid and dark part Matteusz had always tried to squash, the one that felt like his father, wanted to take a knife from the kitchen and slit his and Charlie’s throats. He whimpered when the mental image came to him, followed by screams of Shadow Kin children being murdered by golden lights. If Charlie could do that, then he was a monster, and he deserved to die. If Matteusz could still love him, then he was a monster too. 

Matteusz raised an arm to cover his eyes, the hairs pricking his sensitive eyelids as tears ran down his cheeks. He wanted to go home. Home, to his Grandmother in Poland. Home to his family. Home to that morning, standing in Charlie’s room, his fingers brushing Charlie’s neck as he reached out to kiss him. He wanted anything but what he had. It felt wrong to still be here, to pervert the good memories he associated with Charlie’s flat with what had been done. But he refused to abandon Charlie, even if he did decide to leave.

Exhausted, but mind racing too much to sleep, Matteusz rolled over on the couch (which was too short for him, he was going to be in so much pain tomorrow, but didn’t he deserve it?) and stared at the blanket covered cabinet.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Two traumatised teens, Quill, and a baby. It goes better than it should.

It was a week later when Quill came home. Matteusz had not gone back to school yet. There was only bad memories there, trauma waiting to sink its claws into his brain. Charlie barely seemed to have left his bed. Matteusz knew that he had, he had heard the flush of the toilet a few times, but Charlie had begun to move so silently that no one could hear him. Matteusz left a cup of water and some food outside of Charlie’s door, and it was beginning to be eaten with greater frequency. Matteusz was glad that Charlie’s body seemed to be waking up, even if his mind so far had not.

Oddly enough, there had been no calls from the school regarding their prolonged absence. He expected the Headmistress had something to do with it. She seemed to have disappeared before everything was over. He had not heard or seen her death, so he suspected she had run away. He hoped that she had run to get help from her mysterious Governors, but even if she had it had not been in time. Either way, he was glad at least someone he been spared from the list of the dead.

But now Quill was there, to fill up the silence that had filled the flat and call the school when they could not go (though she would probably have to be bribed). Quill, sharp and satisfied and holding her baby in her arms. A girl, with dark skin and Quill’s brightness in her eyes, but with a delightful smile nothing like Quill’s tooth filled grin. 

“So you are not dead then,” he said, knowing that it was callous. It made him feel guilty to say it, something that Charlie would say at his worst. Perhaps that was why, to keep some part of Charlie alive. He had even begun to think of her as Quill, the hardened soldier instead of the mean and quite frankly inept high school teacher. But even so… “I’m glad.”

“Hm,” she grunted, reaching into a shelf and grabbing a half eaten bar of chocolate. “Turns out it was one tradition from my people that can go screw itself. I will not have my daughter be raised by morons. Speaking of, where is darling Charles?”

Matteusz looked down folding his arms around himself. He felt as if he was being reprimanded, almost. As if he should have done more to wake Charlie from his catatonia. But Quill did not seem particularly angry, though she was holding the chocolate far from her daughter’s grasping hands. 

“He is ill.”

“In body or soul?” Quill asked around a bite of chocolate. She was irritatingly perceptive at times.

“His soul. If I did not know better, I would say it was gone. Maybe it is. After April, how can we really be sure?”

“Ah yes, our little miracle. Maybe we should make last Saturday another of these ‘Easter’ celebrations.”

Despite himself, Matteusz began to chuckle. It was absurd, but true. It was more akin to three minutes that three days, but April had been resurrected. He had witnessed a miracle, right after his worst nightmare. The saint medal around his neck felt heavy where it lay against his chest.

“Have you seen her?” Matteusz asked.

“Nope.” Another bite of chocolate. “Been busy with this thing haven’t I.” She waved at her significantly smaller belly, then at her child. “Thought you might have gone looking.”

“I- I haven’t left the house.”

“But you wanted to.” Irritatingly perceptive. “Everyone does. You wouldn’t be a person otherwise. How far did you get?”

“Only the door. I could never open it.”

“You really are a goner for him. No one else can even say his name.” 

Matteusz felt anger rise in his chest at that. They had all begged Charlie to use the cabinet. It was sadness and fear, he could understand, but how dare they force Charlie into becoming their murder weapon and then make him shoulder the blame?! No, that was the bad part again. They could not comprehend what it would do. They weren’t the ones with the hand on the trigger. And they weren’t the ones who had to cope with the fallout after the trigger had been pulled.

“They are children. Not soldiers. I admit that I was too caught in my own grief too explain to them the consequences of their desires. But they are young, and have not been driven solely by their loss. They will be fine.”

“And you?”

“I admit, there is an emptiness when your revenge has been sated.” Quill began to bounce her baby on her hip. It made her look… like a mother. “But without it I can move on. I can accept my grief. That is the difference between Charles and I. I have more to live for than a memory.”

“Here,” she handed Matteusz her baby. He quickly arranged his arms so that he was cradling her. She was smiling up at him. Her cheeks were puffed out, and there was a small tuft of hair on her head. She was beautiful. More importantly, she was alive. Wonderfully and eagerly alive. After everything that happened, even though he could hear the sounds of life coming from outside, Matteusz had been half convinced that they had failed and earth had become one giant graveyard. Like the Shadow realm. Like Rhodia. But here was a sweet little baby, another Quill in a universe without them. Drinking in her surroundings with nothing short of glee. 

He did not realise he was crying until the baby scrunched up her face when the drops hit her skin. Not just crying though. Laughing too. Smiling, breathless and amazed. 

“You’re only happy because you haven’t been her sole caretaker for the past four days.” Quill shrugged off her coat and put it away in her room, along with the suitcase she had been carrying. Of the three of them, Quill was probably the only one who could be considered ‘tidy’. Possibly because mess contradicted the severity of her aesthetic. Once she returned she immediately began to move upstairs. “Come on, baby, it’s time to go greet his royal highness.”

“I-I’m not so sure that is good idea.” Matteusz said, though he followed her anyway. Maybe Charlie would react in a similar way to him. Any reaction would mean Matteusz could finally start breathing again. “And you still have not given her name?”

“Well, I wasn’t expecting to get this far into the process, so it’s shifted a little low on my priorities.” Quill replied.

“Names are important!”

“And yet you are telling me to rush the decision, so how important are they _really_.” The words were not as harsh as they would have been a few weeks ago. Matteusz wondered if the change, ever so slight though it may be, was the result of motherhood or placating her desire for revenge. Quill did not seem the type to go soft on the world just because she had a child, so he supposed that she had simply resigned her anger with the Shadow Kin’s destruction. 

Quill pushed Charlie’s door open in a way that suggested that maybe she had not completely relinquished her anger. It banged against the wall. Matteusz would have to check for a dent later. Charlie did not make any acknowledgement of their presence, even when Quill pulled the curtains open and sunlight poured into his room. 

“This room smells revolting. How have you lived like this,” Quill sniped, opening the windows to allow the breeze to come through. Matteusz admitted that the air felt good. He had been inside for too long and his lungs longed for the fresh air. “Well come on. Time to do your ‘duty’.”

That managed to break through to Charlie. Though it may have been the way that Quill hauled him into a sitting position as if she was moving a chair. He looked awful. He was pale and gaunt, as if he had been dying from some terrible disease. Red eyes peered out from matted hair, though they still seemed as though he would not notice if the world burned around him.

“Well it’s one of your stupid traditions, isn’t it? Mothers bring their newborns because the royals are just so amazing that they can bless an infant with a long and happy life or something like that. I never really paid attention. You,” she said to Matteusz, “bring her here.”

Matteusz hurriedly moved forward, easing Quill’s baby into Charlie’s arms. He maneuvered Charlie’s arms so that he was supporting her weight properly, but kept his arms below Charlie’s so that he could stop her from falling if he had to. Charlie stared down at her, blinking slowly. He looked as if he wasn’t quite sure what she was. 

“You know what to do,” Quill said quietly. Matteusz doubted that she was doing this for her baby’s sake, considering her disdain for all thing Rhodian. Which meant that she must have been doing it for Charlie. Perhaps she didn’t hate him as much as she claimed. Slowly, Charlie moved his hand so that it was cradling her head.

“There’s no fruit,” Charlie whispered. His voice cracked even then, and Matteusz could see how broken Charlie’s lips were. He must be severely dehydrated. Quill shoved a container of apple containing baby food at him.

“This is good enough.”

Charlie began to whisper, words that did not even sound like words but sounded beautiful anyway. Matteusz felt like he was at a christening. He had not been to one in years, when his youngest cousin (at the time) was born. Except this was in a bedroom (on a bed that two men had had sex in and wouldn’t _that_ go over well with the Catholic Church), with three aliens, at least two people that may as well have become the poster boys for depression, and a ‘priest’ who had one week ago destroyed an entire planet by burning down his version of Heaven. 

They were a strange family.

When Charlie nodded, Quill spooned a small amount of the baby food into her daughter’s mouth. Judging by her reaction, it seemed the baby liked food much more than Quill did (or at least human food). Maybe Quill would like baby food more than vegetables, which had been tried and immediately spat back out. 

Charlie then lifted Baby Quill to him, almost as if he was trying to protect her. Perhaps he was. After Charlie’s experiences in the past year, it was not surprising for him to try to protect a child from being subjected to the same sufferings of the universe as he had. His hand was shaking, soon his whole body, and then he was sobbing silently. It was as if he had been muted, Charlie’s mouth twisted as if he was screaming but no sound coming out. Matteusz tried to touch him, but Quill batted his hand away and shook her head. 

They waited in silence. Charlie’s lips had begun to move in what looked like silent apologies. Matteusz wasn’t sure what Charlie would be apologising for, but if he knew anything it was that Charlie took more blame on himself than he should. Once Charlie had even blamed himself for the massacre. As if a seventeen year old should have absolute knowledge of the shadows of an entire country, even if that seventeen year old was a Prince.

“Take her,” Charlie sobbed brokenly, holding the baby away from him. When Matteusz and Quill made no effort to move, he all but screamed the words at them. Matteusz gathered her into his arms. Once she was no longer in his hands, Charlie crumpled in on himself. It seemed he had woken up, and with that, had realised what he had done. Seeing Charlie in such a pitiful state made Matteusz wonder if perhaps it would have been kinder to let him rot away in his slumber. But that was a pain Matteusz was not willing to bear. Matteusz was selfish. He would rather have Charlie back, suffering though he may be, than leave him to sleepwalk forever.

Quill cocked her head to the door. They left the room, leaving Charlie to collapse. It was their only hope that he would eventually be able to pick himself up again. Matteusz wanted nothing more than to run back up the stairs and comfort Charlie through his tears but- still. He rationalised it as Charlie needing to do most of the work on his own, lest he only ever function through use of a crutch than walk on his own again. Some nights Matteusz wondered if that’s all he had ever been- someone to rely on, a figure to love so that Charlie did not have to cope with the claws of his life. It had been one of his dark thoughts, and he was glad that his insistence that it was just his mind being cruel had kept him from speaking it when holding the rock. He did not want to be the only thing that kept Charlie living. But in truth he could not yet touch Charlie without seeing that stone from the cabinet in his hands.

“That was nice thing to do,” Matteusz said once they were downstairs.

“You cannot suffer if you are not aware,” Quill replied, but she did not seem to believe the words she said. At least not entirely. He did not doubt that she wanted Charlie to suffer, and to suffer badly. But there were moments- small ones, ones that you would not notice unless you were focusing- that suggested an emotion that was not caring, but similar to trust. She had trusted Charlie to use her gun, after all. And maybe, just maybe, there was the slightest hint of respect in there as well. Buried under the hatred, disdain, and just general irritation. 

He turned his attention to the baby in his arms. A little miracle. Maybe she would be the last of her kind. Maybe she would just be the next in a long and prosperous line. An eternal thread of Quills, all as frightening and inspiring as the last. The remnants of a lost species. Matteusz was not sure if Charlie could ever find it in himself to continue the Rhodia- though he would hate himself if he did not. Still, it was a darkly amusing thought. The only survivors of Rhodia being that species of heartless monsters that they hated so much. 

“What about Hope? Hope is nice name.”

“... Don’t ever insult my child in that way again.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I tried to make this optimistic without being sappy, and hopefully I managed it. 
> 
> I have also decided that this will be the first instalment in a series. I'm not entirely sure if that will go well, because I'm about to be quite busy and this will be the first time in years that I will be updating something as I write instead of finishing it first. Let's all hope it goes well, shall we?
> 
> Comments are always welcome.

**Author's Note:**

> I know Matteusz may seem slightly darker than he is in canon, but he seems to me like someone who is always making an active choice to be a good person but may still have some negative impulses due to his life experiences. That and he has just been through a severely traumatic experience so some less than happy thoughts are probably to be expected. 
> 
> Part Two should be up soon (it's a bit more optimistic). Comments are welcome!


End file.
